Is This Wildly Bizarre Drew Barrymore Interview Fake or Not?

A celebrity gives an interview to a writer in an inflight magazine—sounds normal, right? It is, unless you’re talking about Drew Barrymore’s wildly bizarre new interview in the latest issue of Horus, EgyptAir’s inflight mag, which has gone viral for its very interesting grammar and content. But did Barrymore actually give the interview? Different parties involved have all given different answers, so the jury is still out. Here’s where it all started:

Adam Baron, a political analyst and writer, was flying to Cairo on EgyptAir when he picked up Horus, perhaps looking for the best Cairo karaoke or whatever the Egyptian version of Hammacher Schlemmer is. But instead, he found this “interview” with Barrymore—with air quotes around the word because Barrymore’s answers were so strange it seemed unbelievable she could have actually given them. His tweet traveled about as fast as his EgyptAir flight did.

In the interview, the writer introduces Barrymore as embarking on a new stage in her career, which she describes as “an unlimited vacation to play her most crucial role as mother.” Adding to the awkward phrasing (motherhood is hardly a vacation), the passage took an even kookier turn in describing Barrymore’s youth and past relationships: “Despite being unstable in her relationships most of her life,” it explained, and “despite the several unsuccessful marriages and despite the busy life of stardom that dominated her life for several years,” Barrymore is focusing on her two daughters.

But it doesn’t stop there: The writer went on to semi-diagnose Barrymore. “It is known that Barrymore has had almost 17 relationships, engagements and marriages” and experts would say that her “behavior is only natural since she lacked the male role model in her life after her parents’ divorce when she was only 9 years,” the piece continued in a vaguely clinical tone. “Ever since that time, she has been subconsciously seeking attention and care from a male figure; but unfortunately things do not always go as planned, and she has not yet succeeded in any relationship for various reasons.”

Given the rather personal nature of the introduction, it seems shocking that Barrymore would have sat for such an interview, and her own quotations only confirmed that idea. Talking about the place of women in history, Barrymore reportedly said: “I cannot deny that women made a great achievement over the past century, there is significant progress recorded by people who study women status throughout history.”

As Baron’s Tweet made its way around the Web, the identity of the writer, Aida Takla O’Reilly, was revealed. Adding to the surreal nature of events is the fact that O’Reilly was previously the president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. In a tweet, O’Reilly admitted to the interview: “This doesn’t negate the fact that the interview with Drew Barrimoor [sic] which took place in New York is genuine &far from fake. As far as Drew we interviewed her several times I saw her grow up before my eyes she is charming and talented.” Not to mention the rather deranged spelling of “Barrimoor” (O’Reilly later said she had dictated the tweet), who is the “we” conducting the conversation? Variety claims that O’Reilly “doesn’t appear to have conducted an one-on-one interview—the Hollywood Foreign Press typically conducts group press conferences which the members utilize for articles in various foreign publications. Barrymore was promoting the Santa Clarita Diet earlier this year.”

What does Barrymore have to say? A spokesperson for Barrymore told Huffpost that the actress “did not participate” in the interview and that her team is “working with the airline PR team.” But the airline retweeted O’Reilly’s explanation and thanked her for the clarification.

Which is all to say: What the heck is going on? Does a celebrity interview now just mean answers cobbled together from a set of several press conferences? Did Horus run a poorly translated interview from an Arabic language magazine that no one thought Barrymore, or Twitter, would read? The one thing we know for certain is that inflight reading just got exciting again.